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Sunday, 27 September 2015

We resumed
the game started last weekend in which you may remember the situation was more
or less tilting towards a draw, with two lines of British and Germans respectively
facing each other in the woods to the left of the map.

However, at
the conclusion of the game the Germans had suffered an outright defeat and left
the battlefield nose-bleeding. Reasons? A major mistake in the initial German move
and a strike of lucky British dice.

Friday, 25 September 2015

Worth taking a look to this post in Tiny Hordes blog. He's made in collaboration with a Spanish wargamer (not me!) an exhaustive research to put army lists for all nationalities involved in the Italian campaign 43-45: US, British, Commomwealth, Germand and Italian.

In my view, a must-read... and with my German Paratroopers project about to start, I see Monte Cassino looming in the horizon. :-)

Monday, 21 September 2015

An interesting situation emerged in the game yesterday
that I believe is worth commenting and having your views too.

You may remember that a German half-track was
knocked just just before we stopped playing. This action brought a major
(tense?) discussion among the players, as it was a combination of the combat
effect of a sniper and a PIAT.

First some background before dealing with the
reasons for this discussion.

Morale is a key component of Chain of Command, by means of a
simple but effective mechanism. The fighting efficiency of the combat units
decreases not only as a result of casualties but also by accumulation of
“shocks”: when shocks are equal to the surviving men in the unit, it is pinned
(forced to take cover and fire is halved); when shocks are more than double the
men the unit is broken and routs (becomecombat ineffective).

The Chain of Command sniper rules give some
interesting bonuses to this support option including doubling shocks when
successfully hitting a target but not achieving a kill.

Sunday, 20 September 2015

Coinciding with the week of the 71st anniversary of Market Garden and just a few weeks to visiting the battlefield site in November, we
decided to start the autumn-winter 2015 season with an Arnhem-based game for
Chain of Command. Sometime ago, Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine
published a special issue (number 74) focused specifically on the operation;
TooFtaLardies boss Richard Clarke wrote a short campaign called “5th Platoon”
that we started today.

As described in the magazine:

“It follows the actions of 5 Platoon, who were the spearhead for 3 Para’s
advance on Arnhem down the Utrechtseweg, one of the three key routes that 1st
Airborne were to take into the city. The period of time covered by these
actions is relatively short, lasting just a couple of hours at most, and
geographically they covered about a mile of that key stretch of road.”

The British win by
emerging victorious from the four games, which allow them to control a key
crossroad at the Koude Herber Inn. The British Paras must progress at all costs
towards the objective their main advantagebeing an elite force; the Germans had all type of second rate troops
(clerks, staff officers, training personnel, etc) to be thrown in the
path of the British.

About Anibal Invictus

A fairly experienced Spanish wargamer, based in Madrid. Together with a group of friends founder of "Club Dragón" in the early 80s. A truly TooFatLardies gruppie since a first love encounter in 2008, I regularly play the Napoleonic, WWI, WWII and Vietnam periods.